Swordsman’s Solace Chapter 1 (Old)

         The smell of ale, fried sausage, and vomit hung heavy in the outside air as the warm summer night roared, even as the moon hung peered down from late-night sky. Argere’s sense of smell kept him from going inside taverns anymore. Five years since the change had taken to him, and he still couldn’t get around his own nose.
         Well, he’d learned to ignore it most of the time, and keep his distance when he could ignore it no more, and then all was right with the world. Perhaps not everywhere, not when wars raged and bandits fought on, but with his world, at least.
         Like hell it was.
         He tensed his fingers, and watched the deep red scar on his forearm twist and warp with the motion, thoroughly bored. The boredom didn’t bother him, oh no. If anything, it meant a moment away from his curse, even if it wouldn’t last.
         He adjusted the shoulder of the iron half-breastplate that covered his right side as sat leaning against the wall of the tavern. He always wore it, on top of a leather jerkin and a black short-sleeved tunic, together nearly the dark brown color of his hair. He’d seen too many brawls start and escalate in an instant to not be prepared, not with his luck. Certainly not while he was stuck guarding a sorcerer’s caravan.
         Another burst of laughter sounded from inside, the right kind. The kind that meant the drink still flowed, and that no one had run afoul of anyone yet. Stories passing around over froth-covered mugs, sometimes in hushed voices and other times with drinking songs.
         The truth was, Argere hated those songs more than the overwhelming smells of a good time. There were no truthful war stories, after all. No one talked about the weight of a sword in your hands, the screams and stench of death that filled the air, and the pounding in your chest that never stopped until the last body hit the ground.
         He heard the door creak open, and he turned his head with one eye open, meeting the gaze of the last one out.
         “Still out here, ey hunter?” The man laughed, as his name slid out of memory before Argere could grasp at it. Another one of the mercenaries the scholar hired, a man with decent skill with an axe and a pair of good eyes. Not to mention an entourage of swordthralls, which counted for something. At least, the blooddrinker seemed to think so, and Argere didn’t get paid enough to disagree right now.
         Argere took a good look at the other man. Close-cut blond hair, well trained midlander’s body. Might have a bit of Galdinian blood in him, but Argere never asked. But he wasn’t a head taller than everyone else in the party, so he wasn’t a real Galdinian, as much as he acted like one.
         “I guess the open air and night sky just suite me. Who’s watching the adept?”
         “Got a pair of my boys keeping an eye on him. They know better than to drink on the job.”
         “Do they?”
         The man shrugged. “Least, not too much, for sure.”
         Argere didn’t let himself worry very much. His job was to watch the roads, not the streets. No one asked him to guard his client here in town, and he’d sorely disappoint them if they did. In any case, it was a safe bet that no one wanted to start a fight with a sorcerer, which the scholar most definitely was.
         The brand, the scars, the lot of them had all left their mark on Adept Nilocaan’s face. Nilo wasn’t one of the lucky ones, but he’d definitely paid his dues. So while Argere didn’t like Nilo, respect was a given. It had taken the first week of travel for the adept to squander that respect.
         “You should learn to lighten up and relax. Town like this won’t come around again until we get there.”
         Argere shrugged off the invitation. “We’re leaving come morning, right?”
         “Up to him, isn’t it?”
         “I didn’t sign on for him to laze about feasting and drinking in taverns. Tell him if he does this a third time I’m taking my pay and walking.”
         “You think you can pry a few coins out of his purse before he gets to the capital?”
         “Say what you will. I can’t do what I was paid to do anyway if he wastes time drinking himself to oblivion.”
         “Your job is to keep him safe, innit?”
         “My job is to safely get him to the temple. Implies travel.”
         “Ha. I’ll let him know, and I’ll bet he docks your pay for the insult.”
         Argere ignored the man, discarding the name “Tollis” as it teased memory. Too late to matter. He watched the night sky, and started counting the stars. Something to do, at least, while he waited for his eyes to grow heavy enough with sleep that they overtook the tavern smells.

***

         Sure enough, they were moving the following morning. No small wonder, as much as the old man liked his drink. There he was, sitting doubled over in the passenger cart with his stringy black and gray hair blowing in the wind. Argere felt no pity for a man too old to not know his limits.
         The road carved a path through verdant tree growth, smooth enough for carts to travel but only just. And the forest offered ample opportunity for ambush, if, anyone had such ideas.
         The worst part of a job like this was the waiting, the traveling, the nothingness. Not the absence of danger, but the expectation thereof. If Nilo’s concerns about the road had a foundation of truth to them, then of course battle would have been worse. But waiting for it, anticipating it, all while nothing happened, that tortured a man, kept him awake at night.
         Demons marked one concern, one which did seem to plague sorcerers more often than not, for reasons no one really understood. No one knew where they came from beyond the wall, not for sure. Some told stories that feral demons were sorcerers who got corrupted by their magic, but no one had ever seen the transformation, and Argere had far too often seen the foul blackblood simply kill the practitioners of magic to believe it. Even the lucky ones.
         As for bandits, Argere didn’t know what to expect. No one would know the old man was a sorceror from a distance, so if they had the numbers to comfortably take on five warriors and a couple of hired hands, they would. He’d heard of a few incidents over the years, of course.
         The roads to the Great Temple of Helica, however, remained safer. In part because of the temple’s warrior order, in part because feral demons did not distinguish between travelers and outlaws, and most of all because no sane man wanted to cross a fellow who drank the same blackblood that poured from the veins of monsters and granted untold power.
         Regardless, Argere kept his eyes on the road, his bow in his hands, and his mind on the map he’d gone to the effort of memorizing. Seven days into their trip, six days out from their destination, give or take another godsdamned hangover.
         Must be nice, he thought as he watched a hawk fly overhead with a snake clutched between its talons. His mind was still on Nilo, the old bastard, wondering what it was like to be able to drink his sorrows away. Argere himself was years overdue for a drink, but the ale never quelled the feelings. The candle of forgotten emotions always threatened, and only Argere himself could snuff it before it burned him again. Yet here he was, wasting his time leading a caravan that probably didn’t need his help.
         The pay kept him here, for what was supposed to be a quick, simple journey. Gods damn the temple, and bless their deep pockets. Had anyone else tried to pay Argere what Nilo had, he’d have never touched it.
         Not that Argere cared for wealth, since he knew he’d probably lose it on another worthless “miracle cure” for his curse. He’d long resigned himself to his fate, since no one knew the real nature of his condition and anyone who claimed otherwise had lied. If nothing else, it gave him a hobby besides outliving Shoran. Trying in vain to make his life bearable again was the closest he’d come to living a bearable life in a very long time.
         He took a moment to prove to himself that the movement he saw in the clouds beyond was really just the clouds. It didn’t look like a dragon, and sure enough it wasn’t, but it paid to be paranoid when being right was the difference between dying a fiery death and leaving the client to die a fiery death. No one stayed behind to fight a dragon, certainly not without an army and more than just a single, senile wizard still shaking off last night’s booze.
         Argere didn’t normally imagine monsters in the clouds. The lack of sleep was getting to him, he decided, and resolved to fix it tonight however he could. But tonight was a long way off.
         Hills loomed ahead, on either side of the road as it curved around out of view. Argere saw something cut through the woods, and he stopped long enough to determine it was just a squirrel, darting through the undergrowth before bounding up a sturdy oak. Then the bend was upon them, and a crossroads beyond that. A prime location for an ambush, and here he was watching the vermin of the forest. He shook it out of his system, and locked his eyes forward towards the road.
         But it wasn’t an ambush waiting for them. Just a slave caravan, pulled off to the side of the path. Nilo’s cart driver called back, and prepared to slow. Nilo looked up, sober enough to give the order. As the sound of dirt shifting ceased, the old sorcerer pulled himself up out of the cart with a grunt and waved in acknowledgment.
         The leader of the slave caravan waved back, and started approaching. A towering Galdinian man, his brown hair thinning and a round belly. Still, he was a barrel-chested giant of a man with arms that could probably wrestle a bear to the ground, so no pushover.
         “Oh good, another waste of time. You gonna leave now?”
         Argere didn’t pay Tollis any mind. He focused on not making eye contact with any of the slaves. They sat chained together in the dirt, no cart to convey them to wherever they were due. seven strong-backed men and two women, a mix of Helvian and Turgian faces, the reality of their situation showing itself in varying degrees. The young ones didn’t know what the older ones did, that they would likely never get to travel again. But all wore anxiety, and not just the slaves but the guards too, several men wearing hardened leather armor and carrying clubs and spears. Six of them in all.
         Argere squeezed his right forearm, as if it would stop him from thinking about the scene before him. Gods forbid him from getting involved. Nothing good would come of that. Not for anyone, no matter what.
         Nilo started talking, his damned silver tongue, and gesturing back at the temple’s party. Argere couldn’t make out the words, but the two men shared a laugh. So he took his eyes away from them and put them on the woods. Another squirrel, something to get his mind away from his heart and back on trivialities.
         “He’s calling you.” Tollis’s voice pulled Argere back into the present situation, and he could feel his blood pump. Sure enough, Nilo was waving him over.
         Argere closed his eyes, and mentally listed off every swear he could think of, paired with Nilo’s name in countless unflattering combinations, until he found some semblance of calm. He might as well see what the man was about.
         “You called, adept?”
         “Yes, as a matter of fact. This here merchant, would like to know if we’ve seen his wares. One of them in particular.”
         “One of his slaves got loose, then.”
         “That’s what he told me. Right, Kurnil? I said you were our best eyes and ears, so he wanted to hear from you.”
         The man nodded. “Last night, one of my lads looked the wrong way for half a second, and the bitch slipped her chains. Always gotta watch the quiet ones, I tell them. But here we are. You haven’t seen any travelers, have you? Short-cut bronze hair, scrawny twenty-”
         “No.”
         “Nothing? No tracks, no-”
         “Nothing. Is that all?”
         The summer air seemed to chill for an instant, as a breeze tickled the back of Argere’s neck. The slave merchant looked at him, while Argere juggled between trying to read the man’s frustration and keeping his own contempt from showing up.
         “Well, there you have it. You’ll have to forgive him. He’s not very talkative, but he’s plenty honest. Well worth the gold I’m paying him.”
         “Well, keep an eye out for me, will ya? These aren’t regular stock. They’re fresh bodies for the sunderwall. Lot belongs to the Emperor.”
         “That does sound important. Tell you what, if we find her for you, we’ll send her your way. We don’t have far to go in any case. Can probably let a few of my lads end their contracts when we get to Covilax. You’ll pay for her return, I presume? Perhaps a small advance for our trouble.”
         The man crossed his arms. “I’m not here to bargain. You’re loyal to the emperor, right?”
         “Of course, of course, but these men are still sellswords. Perhaps if you explain it the the imperial troops they’ll help you for free.”
         And expose their own failure? Argere doubted that would ever happen.
         He felt satisfied the man was done talking to him, so he returned to the front of the temple caravan, and waited, tracing the clouds with his finger in the hopes it would stop the burning sensation which filled the right side of his body, which had started to spread out towards his am. If the curse got the better of him here, he wouldn’t keep it in check.
         A short time later, the two men concluded whatever it was they were talking about. Lost in himself, Argere didn’t know how long it had taken the two, but the sound of footsteps in the dirt drew his attention to Nilo walking towards him. In response, Argere offered no greeting.
         “You seem rather calm, somehow.”
         Argere didn’t tense, or motion, or shrug. “Guess I just am.”
         “And I guess you won’t help search for their runaway.”
         Argere shook his head. “It’s not the job I took.”
         Nilo grinned, the scars of his magic forming an impromptu dimple. “I’m glad I chose you, then.”
         That makes one of us, thought Argere. Gods damn the Temple, and damn its deep pockets too.